Demon Copperhead -- a book review

 

Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver. 

See all those sticky notes? Those are passages worthy of noting. But then, my blog post would be almost as long as the book.

Demon Copperhead is Barbara Kingsolver's most recent novel. She is, in my opinion, the best writer working in the United States today. This novel is serious about serious subjects -- poverty, the oxycontin epidemic, the region-wide loss of livelihoods, and the generational loss of hope. 

I was a caseworker for the Oklahoma welfare department back in the late 1970s and early 80s. Logan County where I lived and worked was not the poorest county and our town Guthrie was not the poorest town in our State, but economic opportunities were very limited. What were the possibilities? Guthrie's population at that time was 10,300 plus or minus. It is 30 plus or minus miles from Oklahoma City and there was (and is, as far as I know) no public transportation available for those who would work in The City. There were jobs for people without a high school education, but not many and not well-paying. The two largest manufacturing businesses in our town were the furniture factory and the casket factory. The major grocery stores and Walmart at least offered medical insurance for full-time employees. Small business owners did as well as they could, but even their medical insurances came with high deductibles and copays and, for the most part, pay for their employees was low and medical insurance was the employees' own look-out. The people I worked with were people who had fallen on hard times and had basically no place to go and no way to get there if they did. But, for the most part they were not bad people.

The most important thing that I learned working in that job was that it is NOT true that people are whatever degree down-and-out they are because they're lazy or they make "poor choices." Or they're just "worthless and so was their whole family." I repeat, this is not true.

Kingsolver "gets it." She paints an unflinchingly stark and, at the same time, beautiful portrait of the countryside and poor people in Lee County, Virginia.

Kingsolver tells this story in first person from the title character Demon's point of view.

The world Demon was born into was definitely not any kind of  his "choice." His single, teenage mother was raised in Virginia's foster system. She had no "people." Demon explains his parentage and name "One of Mom's bad choices, which she learned to call them in rehab, and trust me there were many, was a guy called Copperhead. Supposedly he had the dark skin and light green eyes of a Melungeon, and red hair that made you look twice."

Whoa, rehab? So we've learned Demon's mom was a druggie. And Melungeon? A new word for me -- Wikipedia: "an ethnicity from the Southeastern United States who descend from Europeans, Native American, and sub-Saharan Africans brought to America as indentured servants and later as slaves. Historically, the Melungeons were associated with settlements in the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and eastern Kentucky." 

So didn't Demon have enough trouble without being considered "non-White?" in this county of about 20,000 people, 94% of whom are white.

Even the sunshine was limited in his world.

     “Living in a holler, the sun gets around to you late in the day, and leaves you early. In my
     years since, I’ve been amazed to see how much more daylight gets flung around in the
     flatter places. This and more still yet to be learned by an excited kid watching his
     pretty mom chain-smoke and listen to the birds sing.” 

Demon was unceremoniously born to that "pretty mom" alone in a rented trailer house. He loved her and took care of her the best that a child could for as long as he could. 

Their home was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Peggot. Mrs. Peg found the newborn Demon still inside his amniotic sac and attached to his unconscious mother. Mrs. Peg called the ambulance. The Peggots were the closest thing to responsible, caring adults in Demon's childhood. They owned the trailer house and lived next door with their grandson, Demon's best friend, "Maggot" (an unfortunate, but easily remembered corruption of his name Matthew Peggot.) Maggot's mother, one of the Peggot's daughters, was in prison for killing her abusive boyfriend (manslaughter.)

Again, which of these were "choices" of any kind for these children? Or the grown-ups either?

The Peggots were good people. They treated Demon and his Mom like family. But what about their "choices?" 

     "Mr. Peg knew about [when "Once upon a time, a nice piece of land and good prospects
     and a boy that loved his farming] back whenever he was a boy, his family did well with the
     corn and tobacco before they had to sell off their land a piece at a time for people to build
     houses on. Same with Mrs. Peggot, she started out as a little girl on a farm before their daddy
     sold his land for a certain number of hogs, one for each child. After that, their farm was a
     coal mine where her brothers worked and Mr. Peg also. Mining is how he got his crushed foot.”

Demon explains why these hard-working, God-fearing, family-loving people stayed. Even as tobacco and coal were on their way out? Their livelihoods were being discontinued.

     "Why does a man keep trying? A farmer has his land and nothing else. He's more than
     married to it, he's on life support. If he puts his acreage in corn or soy, he might net
     seven hundred dollars an acre. Which is fine and good for the hundred-acre guys.
     Star Wars farmers.

     "But what if he's us, with only three that can be plowed? In the little piece of hell that
     God made special for growing burley tobacco, farmers always got seven thousand
     an acre. A three acre field is no fortune, but it kept him alive. No other crop known to man
     that's legal will give him that kind of return....The rules are made by soil and rain and slope.
     Leaving your family's land would be like moving out of your own body."

Farming and mining were exiting stage-left leaving a very big niche to be filled by
     "a shiny new thing. Oxy Contin, God’s gift for the laid off deep-hole man with his back
     and neck bones grinding like bags of gravel. For the bent-over lady pulling double shifts
     at Dollar General with her shot knees and ADHD grandkids to raise by herself. For every
     football player with some of this or that torn up, and the whole world riding on his getting
     back in the game. This was our deliverance. The tree was shaken and yes we did eat of the
     apple.” -- Demon Copperhead

You know, it just seems like some people are doomed from their beginning. They survive one awful situation just to be thrown into the next awful situation. And Demon Copperhead is one among many of those people, but just like "some people," he persists and, like so many around him he tries. He loves. He's loyal to the people close to him.

With a really good story that is really well-written there will come a time that I can't ignore the sorrow and I weep. If it were a movie or a TV show, the story would get past the tears, but a book comes to a halt right there because you can't see to continue. I won't tell you the situation or the character who authors these words to Demon. This is where the book reaches that point. "Never be mean in anything. Never be false. Never be cruel. I can always be hopeful of you."  Words to live up to and to fall back on.

There are times Demon wants to give up, but he doesn't. He endures.

Me? I almost did give up and skip to the end to see how Demon Copperhead and his story come out. An unthinkable act on my part. My firm rule to finish any book I start, was left by the side of the aging- road some time ago, but I have yet to give up on a good book and jump to the end. 

Me and Demon Copperhead. I'm glad I didn't give up either.

From the blurb inside the front flap of the book cover: "...Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society."

          So now I guess I'm gonna have to read Dickens' David Copperfield.